ADVERSE REACTIONS: A Novel of the Paranormal
In the town of Purity, mental gifts earn you a bullet or a lingering death by mind-torture. Devin Perridin is the Syke who survived the horrors of the psych ward. Now the "One Who Got Away" is back for a reckoning. To defeat her tormentors, Devin must reclaim her shattered mind, aided by a denim-clad desperado and a generous helping of Old Magic.
Survival was just the beginning: vengeance is next.
Since she was six years old, Devin Perridin has been locked behind the walls of the family home to keep her hidden from those who would kill her. But at sixteen, she is exposed as a "Syke," one of an outlawed minority who possess extraordinary powers of mind over matter. Snatched from hiding, she escapes the firing squad, but only to be imprisoned in a house of horrors: the Peaceful Hills Sanatorium and Rehabilitation Center for the Treatment of Persistent Mental Disorders. After an unknown time of torture and "behavior modification," brutally designed to destroy her psychokinetic reflexes, she emerges from the asylum severely damaged in mind and spirit. Her salvation may lie in the series of crimes triggered by her release: first kidnapping, then attempted murder, and then a mustering of forbidden forces to assault the remote pseudo-psychiatric facility where she had been tortured into near-mindlessness.
Drawing upon a strength she had always known was hers but had never before been able to consciously control, Devin defies the authoritarian society with its unjust laws that demand her death. She pushes through pain, isolation, and moral quandaries to seek justice for not only herself, but all members of a maligned and cruelly persecuted minority. A post-apocalyptic, paranormal allegory for the times in which we live.
"Thematically rich, as Devin faces constant self-doubt but eventually comes to find empowerment in the unique abilities that have made her an outcast" —The Black List
March 2026
Readers' Comments
"This novel is immediately immersive, with an opening scene that sucks readers in with vivid sensory detail and a great sense of suspense." —The Black List
"What a story! I was picked up from the first page and you never let go of me thereafter. The premise is original … compelling … convincing." —ARC Reader
"A very enjoyable read. Excellent pacing. Immersive language. Polished, effortless writing. I'd love to see a prequel (or three)!" —ARC Reader
"Relevant to the current situation in the world. Ostracizing others who are different out of fear and ignorance. Cruelty and inhumanity." —ARC Reader
"Believable and relatable." —The Black List
Keywords
- Suspense thriller
- Speculative fiction
- Apocalyptic
- Fantasy
- Action-adventure
- High-stakes supernatural thriller
- Dystopian paranormal thriller
- Quarantined asylum
- Speculative history
- Psychokinetic abilities
- Psychokinesis
- Gritty modern Western
- Post-apocalyptic paranormal thriller
- Possibly linked to the Waterspell universe, in a tangential way